


Chemistry and Curiosity

by friendlyneighborhoodsecretary



Series: I'm Never Prompt with Prompts [5]
Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, It's Loving May Parker Hours, Kid Peter Is An Adorable Menace, Kid Peter Parker, Pre-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Pre-Spider Bite Peter Parker, Pre-Spider-Man: Homecoming, Soft Family Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:28:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21753004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendlyneighborhoodsecretary/pseuds/friendlyneighborhoodsecretary
Summary: Keeping Peter Parker in one piece has never been an easy job.
Relationships: May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker
Series: I'm Never Prompt with Prompts [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1558726
Comments: 6
Kudos: 57





	Chemistry and Curiosity

**Author's Note:**

> From the prompt: "I'm Going to Kill You"

_“Peter!”_ May tries not to panic as she barrels up the hall and lunges into Peter’s room through the film of wispy smoke that floats from his doorway. Really, she does, but it’s hard not to think the worst when the frames on her walls have just rattled with the force of the explosion from the room of the nine-year-old who’s just been gifted a chemistry set. That particular birthday gift hadn’t been her idea—she works the ER frequently enough to know that children and “science experiments” are a more volatile mix than most. But the soft, wistful look on Ben’s face as he reminisced about the hours a young Richard had spent fiddling with the chemistry set from their childhood had been too hard to say no to…She’d caved, her hesitations somewhat assuaged by the knowledge that Peter was surprisingly responsible for a kid his age and by the set of rules (no going off-book, no experiments without adult supervision, etc.) they’d laid down along with the gift.

Nothing had gone wrong in the week since…Right up until now.

Peter is sitting at his desk with soot on his face and a dazed look in his eyes when she clears the doorway, blinking down at the shattered beaker in front of him as if he isn’t sure what happened, either. May pounces on him first, cupping his face in both hands for an instant before skimming her hands down his shoulders as she pushes him out to arms’ length to look him over. No bits of test tube embedded anywhere, no chemical burns etched into anything besides the surface of the desk—May deflates with a relieved sigh. Good. That’s…good. She leans over the desk and shoves the window open to let the remaining smoke funnel out into the alley. Draws in a deep, calming breath that tastes of something sharp and acrid and that ultimately just makes her cough. It’s then that she notices that the kit’s instruction booklet has been shoved aside, replaced with a wrinkled notebook covered in handwritten notes. May’s eyes narrow. Yes, it’s good that Peter’s still very much alive because she’s going to _kill_ him.

“ _Peter Benjamin Parker_.” She doesn’t outright _say_ that she’s going to kill him, but she’s fairly sure the disapproval boiling up in her voice does the talking for her on that front. Peter’s a good kid, there’s no question in that. She can count on one hand the number of times she’s ever needed to pull the stern mom voice she keeps up her sleeve, but this…this _terrifying_ lack of regard for his own self-preservation certainly warrants it.

“I didn’t mean for it to do that!” Peter jolts out of the puzzled look he’s been giving the shambles of the project on his desk to give May a look of wide-eyed innocence that doesn’t quite fly just now. “I promise it wasn’t supposed to explode!”

“But it was supposed to do something other than all the nice, _safe_ experiments in the instruction book, yeah?”

Peter goes a shamefaced shade of red and locks his gaze on the unidentified chemical residue seeping into the crevices of his desk. “I…uh…I improvised a little.”

“And you improvised all by yourself, even though we had that little rule about this being a toy you only play with if you’ve got me or Ben around to help?”

Peter opens his mouth, guilty eyes darting back and forth as he casts about for an explanation, but eventually he just settles on a rueful look and a muttered, “M’really sorry, May. I just had an idea, and I wanted to know if it’d work...”

May sighs and reaches out a hand to card it through Peter’s curls. Smiles faintly as she thumbs a smudge of gray soot off his cheek. Of course he was going to be the curious type. How could he not be with all the brains under those curls? With all the smarts he’d inherited, she knew this might be the first time his intellectual curiosity blew up in his face…but she doubted it would be the last.

“There’s nothing wrong with being curious, kiddo. But you have to make you stay in one piece while you’re at it. Okay?”

“Okay, May,” Peter murmurs, still a little wilted and contrite from both the failure and May’s disappointment. But she doesn’t miss the ways his eyes stray back to the notes scrawled across the paper in front of him. And she knows that keeping Peter Parker in one piece isn’t going to get any easier from here.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Feel free to drop a comment with any thoughts you have or stop by and say hello on [Tumblr](https://friendlyneighborhoodsecretary.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
